As the title says, my computer got hacked. As soon as I found out, the computer has been isolated and wiped, that part has been taken care of already.

Last friday, someone from russia (got this from the firewall log) was able to connect to my computer despite having region blocking enabled. For some obscure reason, my computer had not automatically logged me out that day like it usually does after 5 mins of inactivity. Now, I happen to have a camera on the ceiling behind my desk which has full view of my monitors.

At 2AM sharp, I can see my cursor start to move and chrome open. They opened gmail (was already logged in) and scrolled thru my emails. I exclusively use my gmail for garbage and subscriptions, they found nothing but ads and newsletters. They then opened a second tab and opened the Microsoft Azure login page. They then tried to log in using my gmail address, unsuccessfully, as there is no Azure account tied to it. And that was it, they left my computer alone. This took place over the course of about 2 minutes. I don't even use Azure...

I had saved credit cards and a bunch of business files on this computer which they had seemingly no interest into... So now I am wondering what were they after? Azure is a cloud computing plateforme, as far as I am aware? What were they hoping to find? Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’ve been troubleshooting an issue with my PC for weeks now and I’m genuinely running out of ideas. I’ve tried pretty much everything I can think of, and I’m hoping someone here might have experienced something similar.

PC Specifications

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4060
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix B450-F
RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Kingston FURY Renegade DDR4 3600MHz CL16
PSU: ADX 750W
SSD: Lexar THOR PRO 1TB NVMe
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
CPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO
OS: Windows 11 Home
The Problem
My PC works completely fine when doing normal tasks like browsing, watching videos, using Windows, etc.
However, when I launch games (particularly Counter-Strike 2, but I’ve experienced issues with Valorant and Delta Force as well), my PC will randomly freeze completely.
Sometimes it happens shortly after launching a game, other times I can play for a little while before it happens.
When it freezes:
The entire screen becomes completely unresponsive.
Sometimes game audio continues playing in the background despite the screen being frozen.
Other times everything locks up completely.
After a while, the screen goes black.
Eventually, the computer restarts or ends up in the ASUS BIOS.
Most recently, I launched CS2 immediately after a completely fresh Windows installation. The game froze, remained frozen for approximately two minutes, the screen went black, and after another couple of minutes the PC booted directly into the ASUS BIOS settings.

What I’ve Already Tried

Completely wiped the PC and performed a fresh Windows 11 installation.
Installed only Steam, CS2 and Google Chrome after reinstalling Windows.
Issue happened immediately again on the fresh installation.
Ran multiple CPU, GPU and system stress tests, which passed without reproducing the crashes.
Investigated Windows Event Viewer extensively.
Previously encountered volmgr Event ID 161.
Attempted to analyse crash dumps using multiple tools, but couldn’t obtain a conclusive cause.
Changed RAM BIOS settings from DOCP/3600MHz to Auto.
Physically reseated/moved the graphics card.
Tried troubleshooting RAM configurations previously.
Investigated possible anti-cheat conflicts, but the issue persists without FACEIT or other separately installed anti-cheat software.
I have not manually installed an NVIDIA GPU driver following the latest Windows reinstall, although Windows may have automatically installed one.

What’s Confusing Me

The PC can pass demanding stress tests, including tests that put the CPU and GPU under significant load, without any issues.
But as soon as I try gaming, the system becomes unstable.
I would have expected a faulty GPU, CPU, RAM or PSU to show some problems during stress testing, but nothing has consistently identified the problem.
The fact that the issue remains after a completely clean Windows installation makes me think it could be hardware-related.
What I’m Looking For
Has anyone experienced similar symptoms where a PC passes stress tests but freezes completely during gaming?
Could this be caused by a faulty GPU, PSU, motherboard, RAM or even the SSD?
I’m willing to test or replace components if necessary, but I really don’t want to spend money randomly replacing parts without knowing what’s causing the issue.
Any advice on how to isolate the faulty component would be massively appreciated.
Thanks!

I was just notified that I had basically hit my wifi plan's limit for the month, which confused me because I haven't been doing much on it. I checked my laptop's data usage and it showed 70 gb from chrome, 5 gb of which were in the past day (where I was just typing on docs and playing random games). What is causing this and how can I prevent it?

Downloaded a malicious GitHub repo, got hacked within minutes, and now my Microsoft account is gone. What should I do?

I made a huge mistake today. While downloading something from GitHub, I accidentally downloaded and opened a malicious repo.

In literally five minutes since I run it, I started receiving account recovery and password reset emails for various accounts I own. After a second of thinking what happened, I quickly installed Malwarebytes to scan my PC.

It detected a couple of threats on my computer: Trojan.Crypt.MSIL, Malware.AI and something concerning Microsoft Defender exclusions.

Without wasting a second, I started changing my passwords via my phone, such as Google account, Discord, Steam, Epic Games, TikTok, almost every account I could

Unfortunately, in trying to recover my Microsoft account, it says that the account doesn’t exist anymore. I am afraid that some person has managed to gain unauthorized access to the account and change the email.

My main worry right now is whether the malware still operates in the background, stealing any data, and still lurking in the background

As for my computer, I have three drives (C:, D:, and E:) where there is about 300 GB of private recordings and clips with my friends which I definitely would like to keep. Most of them are stored on D: drive, although some are also saved on C: drive.

I’m considering doing a completely fresh Windows installation, but I’m worried the malware could have spread to my other drives.
My questions are:
1. Is a clean Windows installation enough to get rid of the malware?
2. Can I safely keep my D: and E: drives without wiping them?
3. Is there any way to tell what information the malware stole?
4. Is it possible that someone still has access to my accounts even after changing my passwords?
5. Is there anything I can do to recover my Microsoft account if the original email is no longer recognized?
My PC is currently being treated as compromised, and I’ve been securing my accounts from my phone.
Any advice would be appreciated. I’m honestly pretty stressed about the whole situation.
Also like what do I do?
I’m currently running Malwarebytes deep scan

My Dell g5 15 5500 gaming laptop is 5yrs old and Ive never had screen issues or ever abused it, but a year ago+ I would take my laptop apart like twice a year each year but never had issues since. My screen constantly has a gray bar thats moving and glitching when I open chrome and when I close it, it stays and gets worse. Any suggestions to fix this? Ive updated my drivers and tried resetting my integrated gpu and main gpu.

Hey everyone, hoping to get some advice or solutions for my Xiaomi Pad 5.

- My tablet originally froze/stuck on the Xiaomi logo during a normal power-on.
- After turning it off and turning it back on, it booted straight into Fastboot mode.
- Every time I try forcing a reboot (holding the Power button for 10–15 seconds), it briefly displays the Xiaomi logo and then immediately kicks back into the Fastboot screen.
- When I try holding Power + Volume Up to access Recovery/Main Menu, it bypasses Recovery completely and goes right back to Fastboot.

Hey guys just looking for some advice from anyone, there was construction done in my house without my awareness and unfortunately my entire pc room was covered in a thin layer of this dust including a fin layer visible inside my pc. I’m talking a visible layer on the backplate, inside my pc fans, on top of my cooler etc. I would just appreciate some advice on what to do and how dangerous this is, I tried air dusting but it won’t even budge and it’s my first high end pc so I’m not used to cleaning them. I did have dust filters on the outside of the case (Corsair air 5400) which caught a lot of dust but unfortunately some got through. My pc is a 5090FE 9950x3d as well. Any advice from anyone is appreciated.

In regards to my room being covered in dust, I have already deep cleaned it with an appropriate vacuum cleaner, carpet cleaner, and air purifier. My only concern now is my technology as unfortunately I had a lot of expensive equipment in there.

a few days ago, i bought a refurbished iPhone 17 from Amazon's official Renewed Store (i can attach a link to the exact product listing if needed) and while it seems to be working perfectly for the most part i've noticed it gets hot very quickly if i start playing a game on my phone, which is part of why i wanted to upgrade from my old phone (13 mini). is that just an inevitability with iPhones or did i get somehow ripped off and should i return it? i hope this is on topic for this sub.

I have a podcast with my logo that I often post onto my facebook page. It's a jazz podcast called "Discovering Jazz". No problems (usually) getting the podcast with the logo and the written description of the particular episode onto my own facebook page. But when I try to post it onto certain jazz oriented groups that I subscribe to, I can post the link....but while the description shows up when I first post it, when I check back the description is gone. And so is the logo (it gets replaced with the logo of either my podcast host, or apple music or podcast addict (depending on where I access the podcast). Is there a way that I can post it directly onto these other facebook groups (even if many of them are subject to the approval of the moderators) with both the logo and the episode description?

My Acer ED320QR monitor suddenly started displaying what looks like inverted colors or very bright white overlay. I get the same result from a Switch, a MacBook, different HDMI cables and with no input at all. I did “reset all settings” twice and no luck. I noticed that for a split second, when I reset the first time, the screen showed as normal but went right back to this state. Can this be fixed?

Microsoft please update windows so we can use Nintendo Switch Pro controllers on PC

When a Nintendo Switch Pro controller is connected to Windows PC it triggers random inputs on the controller and makes me unable to navigate anywhere (i can't open start menu or do right click on desktop or use file explorer or use any windows apps). It works fine with Steam only but i still cant do other things while my Nintendo Switch Pro controller is connected

If i go to Win + R -> joy.cpl you can see the controllers buttons being rapidly triggered on their own (watch video)

https://imgur.com/Q4NvrJ1

when I set my monitor's refresh rate to 300hz, my fps is capped at 150 in multiple games, and when I set it to 240hz, it is now reaching 240fps, my in game fps is capped at 240, my monitor's vsync is disabled, I'm on a mac mini m2 2023, how do I fix this?

Hi everyone,

Earlier today we were the target of an automated Layer 7 DDoS attack against our production Cloud Run service. The attack was carried out using a Python script (Python/3.13 aiohttp/3.14.5) which was making around 50 requests per second to POST /api/login, attempting to consume container concurrency.

The traffic came through Google's own proxy infrastructure, potentially Apps Script or Colab, rotating across 200+ IPs resolving to google-proxy-*.google.com (e.g., 66.102.8.132, 66.102.8.161, 74.125.210.103).

The problem is that Google's official abuse reporting form (https://support.google.com/code/contact/cloud_platform_report) immediately closes the report with:

We're unable to do anything with this report as the IP address referenced in it isn't hosted on Google Cloud.

It appears the automated system only recognizes customer Compute Engine IP ranges, not Google's own proxy egress IPs (AS15169). As a result, the report gets rejected before anyone can review the Cloud Logging evidence, including timestamps and Cloud Trace IDs.

We've already hardened the backend with distributed Firestore rate limits, concurrency controls and request timeouts so the attack traffic is now being dropped. We've also responded to the closed ticket with the trace IDs, asking for escalation to the relevant Trust & Safety team.

I have three questions:

1. Is there a specific abuse reporting email or intake point for traffic coming in via Google's own proxy infrastructure which would effectively bypass the automated IP validation?
2. Has anyone with Basic Support actually escalated a similar proxy based DDoS to a human at Google?
3. Would Google Bug Hunters be the right place to report this as a potential proxy abuse/SSRF vector or is there a more appropriate channel to get to the relevant security engineers?

Any suggestions on how to get this routed to the appropriate team would be great. Thanks!

Hello im hoping someone can help me as im lost and don’t much about troubleshooting. I was gaming on my pc when it suddenly turned off and wouldn’t turn on again. I started off by plugging it into another outlet and got nothing. After a lot of googling I was able to test my PSU using the paperclip method and the power button by bridging the 2 pins in my JFP1 connector. The PSU paperclip test turned on my fans and light, but when i went to bridge the pins in the JFP1 connector with a screwdriver the pc didn’t turn on but I think i heard a click or something similar to one.

Im lost as to what my next steps should be, I was thinking my GPU or MOBO got cooked. Can anyone help me out, and thanks in advance!

Specs-

Case- iBUYPOWER InWin 305 Tempered Glass RGB Gaming Case

Processor Intel® Core™ i9-10900KF

Video Card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 - 10GB

Motherboard MSI Z490-A PRO - WiFi, ARGB Header (2), USB 3.2 Ports (1 Type-C, 3 Type-A), M.2 Slot (2)

Power Supply 800 Watt - High Power - 80 PLUS Gold

Hi everyone,

As the title says, I have recently noticed that when I run a game in the background, YouTube and Netflix videos get quite laggy.

Before this, everything worked normally. I have already checked my system utilization while gaming, and the GPU load is only around 60% because the game is not very demanding.

My specs are:

• CPU: Intel Core i3-12100
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
• RAM: 32GB

I would much appreciate any help or advice. Thank you!

Im on windows 11, basically theres a quality update that bricks my pc, the taskbar is no longer working, windows key does nothing, startup apps dont start, i tried restarting explorer i tried everything and it still doesnt work, so i just started uninstalling the update since it bricks my pc. I turned off automatic windows update but now it gives me no option to shut down except by udpating, i just did and it still updates to the quality update that bricks it, any thoughts on how to fix it because its getting really annoying.
Specs;
I7-10700k
16gb ddr4 ram
Rx 9060 xt 16gb
1tb nvme ssd

Hello I have a text thread I deleted and I want it back. I’ve restored the messages but it only restored that last 1000 or so and I wanted all of them back and it’s about a years worth of messages. The other number was from an android so I can’t access them on my Mac. Is there a way to get the messages back from an iCloud backup or something?

They’re all from different numbers so I can’t just block it. I usually reply stop and block the number, but they’re always more. They’re all directed towards the person who had my number last.
What can I do to stop them?

I’m planning on ordering a Motorola on Amazon that says “Made for US” but also plan to use as an Unlocked Travel phone. Can it still work with local SIM cards in other countries even if it says “Made for US”?

My laptop is a MacBook Air. The chip is Apple M1 and my mcOS is Tahoe 26.1 if that's any help. I don't know what else to include here but please tell my if I need to put something else

Basically one day I work up and chrome wouldn't open any websites that weren't already open. I tried to open Discord or Gmail or Tumblr but it showed an error message 'This site can't be reached: The webpage at [xyz] might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.'

Youtube still works fine. I've moved to duckduckgo for the time being and everything works fine on there.

The other thing is that I tried to open the Discord app on my laptop but it just showed 'update failed - retying in [xyz] sec..' and then loaded forever. Anki (another application) just showed an error message like the one I got on chrome.

Hey guys.

I opened up my router's Wireless panel today and saw a MAC address, with an impossibly high SNR (-18/-89dBm) and no IP address connected to it, actively transferring and recieving packets. I have no devices that close to the router, especially not Samsung ones, and it's succesfully authenticated too so it's not like it's just trying to connect... I kicked it out and it came right back, the only solution was blocking the MAC.

The MAC starts with BC:8C:CD and it belongs to Samsung ELECTRO-MECHANICS (Thailand).

It's on my (passworded btw) guest VLAN/SSID so it's not my phone or computer or anything like that, the only Samsung thing ever connected to that is an UNPLUGGED TV.

Has anyone else seen this? I've found similar posts but with no answer.

System specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5800x

Motherboard: ASUS Prime Plus B550 Wifi

GPU: Sapphire Nitro+ 7900xtx

RAM: 4x16gb 3600mhz CL18 TeamGroup Xtreem ARGB

PSU: Corsair SF750

Cooler: LianLi Gallahad 240

Case: LianLi o11 mini

Accessories: No Name Brand White PSU Extension Cables from Amazon seller Coolmirico

This build previously had a Gigabyte Vision B550 motherboard which started periodically restarting with high intensity GPU usage in gaming. The issues worsened until I couldn't even get to my desktop before a crash and culminating with a bitlocker loop. After a long diagnosis, first believing it was the PSU, then the GPU, I realized file transfers between my SSD's were also crashing the PC. I figured it was a PCIe issue and after a BIOS flash didn't fix it, I concluded the chipset was dead.

With this ASUS board now, I've got exactly the same issue. The same start, the same progression. One time is a defect, twice is a consistent pattern. I fear either the thermals in my case are abysmal and are cooking the chipset as my GPU is basically smothering it, or that my PSU or the extension cables are feeding dirty power into the motherboard. I've got my third motherboard coming in now and want to make sure this doesn't happen again.

What might be killing my motherboards?

I have a issue that my pc randomly freezes or mostly it turns off like I'd cut power off, sometimes 2-3 times a day, somedays 0, everyday I'm playing counter strike and deadlock, Most of the time crash happens when I'm connecting or ending match idk if is it related with anything or random. I have tried lowering my wattage to 140W on cpu that is i7 14700KF and GPU RX 7800 XT -10% wattage. PSU is 750W be quiet 12M. I have tried many thing and nothing working so far.

So, I busted out a portable SSD I haven't used in a while to move over some big files. A PNY Pro Elite to be specific, and when I plug it in, I find out that it's missing half its space. I know it's a 1 TB drive but it only has about 465 GB. Thought it was a partition issue, so I naturally went to disk management. Problem was that there supposedly isn't any unallocated space. Tried reformatting it, deleting the current volumes, went to cmd and tried extending it via diskpart, tried chkdsk, sdc, and even defrag. Still nothing. Does anyone have any advice?